MRSA Notes

Admittedly, this is a little beyond my understanding, but there is lots of research being done now on Staphylococcal enterotoxins, and this is a short article about one of them:

While scientists understand how many other invaders activate T cells to mount an immune response – through a cascade of biochemical signals that begin with them binding to particular receptors and co-receptors on the surface of cells – what has not been clear is how bacterial superantigens can also activate these cells in the absence of an important known co-receptor.

“Our work identifies an alternate molecular pathway within the T cell that is triggered by these superantigens and goes on to produce this massive, damaging immune attack,” explained Robarts scientist Dr. Joaquin Madrenas, who holds a Canada Research Chair in Transplantation and Immunobiology. He is also Director of London’s FOCIS Centre for Clinical Immunology and Immunotherapeutics and is a professor of microbiology and immunology at The University of Western Ontario. Dr. Madrenas led the study with collaborators in London, Ont., and San Diego.

“The triggering of this pathway suggests that these toxins use a certain super-family of receptors (G protein-coupled receptors) to signal to the cell,” Dr. Madrenas added. “The next step is to identify which receptor in that family is involved – that will then offer a target for an antidote.”

Read the rest.

enterotoxins, MRSA, Research and Development, staphylococcus

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